On Thursday, November 10, 2011, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies held the 11thAsan Dosirak Series with Experts with Dr. Bruce Bennett, Senior Defense Analyst at the RAND Corporation.

In a presentation titled “Some Practical Considerations in Nuclear Deterrence of North Korea,” Dr. Bennett discussed whether nuclear deterrence strategy during the Cold War, premised on the concept of assured destruction, is an appropriate strategy toward North Korea. Instead, Dr. Bennett argued deterrence must focus on threatening the regime itself, assets critical to the regime, and denying the North’s ability to cause damage with its nuclear weapons. Furthermore, these threats must be made credible by effectively coping with challenges inherent to a limited nuclear war that were not seriously considered during the Cold War.

Bruce W. Bennett is a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who works primarily on research topics such as strategy, force planning, and counterproliferation within the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center. His work applies military simulation and analysis, war gaming, risk management, deterrence-based strategy, and competitive strategies. He specializes in “asymmetric threats” such as weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and how to counter those threats with new strategies, operational concepts, and technologies. He is an expert in Northeast Asian military issues, having visited the region some 90 times and written much about Korean security issues, and has also done much work on the Persian/Arab Gulf region. His Northeast Asian research has addressed issues such as future ROK military force requirements, the Korean military balance, counters to North Korean chemical and biological weapon threats in Korea and Japan, dealing with a North Korean collapse, changes in the Northeast Asia security environment, and deterrence of nuclear threats (including strengthening the U.S. nuclear umbrella). He has worked with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Forces Korea and Japan, the U.S. Pacific Command and Central Command, the ROK and Japanese militaries, and the ROK National Assembly. Bennett received his B.S. in economics from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.